Day 9 of #RPGaDay2020 and "Light" immediately processes to the greatest ruse/cult/essential building block of the campaign: The Followers of Apotheosis.... or the Cult of Goodness and Light.
I'm a Euro-centric fantasy guy, and despite a polytheistic mythology, most of nations like the concept of Akana, the god of Law and Order, being cast in the forefront to keep things in line. Akana was the state religion for the Second Ancient Ferasean Empire, and its descendants followed suit. It's a far better organized version of the Roman Catholic Church with significantly less politics and infighting.
In my college game, in order to travel from their home base to the capital, the party needed to pass a lake. At the lake were always a variable number of tents and folks in robes. In the early sessions, it was a place to get dry from the rain, carefully consider the stew they offered, and deal with some talk about prophecy, a new dawn, and all that jazz.
As things progressed, they would notice a great fluctuation in membership but also leadership. The new leaders constantly added info that would have been appreciated day one, such as, most converts to Apotheosis just hung out along the lake, all the while special dedicated leaders protected the tombs of the late kings of Feraso... just on the other side of the water.
As the party discovered parts of Cult's prophecies were complete bunk, they became an indispensible source for magic identification and divination, until such time as the God-King made his return to reunite the empire...
At the end of the day, many were bamboozled, thousands died, and the apocalypse was adverted, but the cult remained, much smaller, tending to the tombs. It could even be said, that the cult historian actually averted global catastrophe, but there's little proof and few people who care.
I've since retroactively added the Cult into my high school and military campaigns to better resemble their roles outside of a Time of Troubles. They are the Guardians of the Tombs, caring over the dead kings, all the while being devout followers of Akana... from a certain point of view. Just like all groups with plenty of time on their hands and an archive open to interpretation, they are prone to prophecy to keeps things interesting.
I'm a Euro-centric fantasy guy, and despite a polytheistic mythology, most of nations like the concept of Akana, the god of Law and Order, being cast in the forefront to keep things in line. Akana was the state religion for the Second Ancient Ferasean Empire, and its descendants followed suit. It's a far better organized version of the Roman Catholic Church with significantly less politics and infighting.
In my college game, in order to travel from their home base to the capital, the party needed to pass a lake. At the lake were always a variable number of tents and folks in robes. In the early sessions, it was a place to get dry from the rain, carefully consider the stew they offered, and deal with some talk about prophecy, a new dawn, and all that jazz.
As things progressed, they would notice a great fluctuation in membership but also leadership. The new leaders constantly added info that would have been appreciated day one, such as, most converts to Apotheosis just hung out along the lake, all the while special dedicated leaders protected the tombs of the late kings of Feraso... just on the other side of the water.
As the party discovered parts of Cult's prophecies were complete bunk, they became an indispensible source for magic identification and divination, until such time as the God-King made his return to reunite the empire...
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| Yeah, like you would trust THAT guy.... |
I've since retroactively added the Cult into my high school and military campaigns to better resemble their roles outside of a Time of Troubles. They are the Guardians of the Tombs, caring over the dead kings, all the while being devout followers of Akana... from a certain point of view. Just like all groups with plenty of time on their hands and an archive open to interpretation, they are prone to prophecy to keeps things interesting.
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| The Hydincall River, leaving Lake Apotheosis. |
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